AT U.N., SYRIAN OFFICIAL CALLS CONFLICT A WAR ON TERROR

Syrian Foreign Minister Walid al-Moallem on Monday pledged to cooperate with international inspectors charged with dismantling the country's chemical arms program, but he vowed to crush a rebellion that he said has drawn strength from al-Qaida.

Addressing the U.N. General Assembly, the diplomat sought to link President Bashar Assad's attempt to prevail in a civil war with the international war on terrorism.

On Sept., 11, 2001, he said, New Yorkers “were burned with the fire of extremism and bloodshed, the same way we are suffering now in Syria.”

He portrayed the rebels, including foreign fighters, as barbaric extremists who “dismember human bodies into pieces while still alive and send their limbs to their families, just because those citizens are defending a unified Syria.”

Some of the most powerful insurgent groups fighting in the civil war espouse a radical Islamist ideology, but the U.S. and its allies have been attempting to bolster the strength of more moderate forces.

“The war on terror is not only Syria's war,” al-Moallem warned. “One day, those terrorists will return to their respective countries, and then no country in the world will be immune from this terrorism, which recognizes no borders, nor geography.”

A spokeswoman for the U.S. mission to the United Nations, Erin Pelton, said the reference to the Sept. 11 attacks was “as disingenuous as it is offensive.”

“The Assad regime's brutal response to what began as peaceful demonstrations precipitated Syria's crisis and has led to the deaths of over 100,000,” she said. “The fact that the Syrian regime has shelled hospitals and used chemical weapons on its own people demonstrates that it has adopted the very terrorist tactics that it today decries.”

The speech came three days after the Security Council passed a resolution requiring Syria to allow immediate and unfettered access to its chemical-arms facilities and scientists.

“I assure you of Syria's commitment to the full implementation” of its obligations,” al-Moallem said. “However, there remains the challenge that is facing all of us: whether those who are supplying terrorists with these types of weapons will abide by their legal commitments, since terrorists, who used poisonous gas in my country, have received chemical agents from regional and Western countries that are well known to us.”

The Syrian government and Russia, its ally, have blamed rebels for an Aug. 21 gas attack that left more than 1,000 people dead. The U.S. and its allies have said the evidence is overwhelming that the government was responsible.

A U.N. chemical-weapons team, headed by Swedish scientist Ake Sellstrom, recently reported that it had collected evidence that the nerve agent sarin was used in the attack in the suburbs of Damascus, but it did not assign responsibility.

“Ladies and gentleman, we are the ones who were targeted by poisonous gases in Khan al-Assal, near Aleppo,” al-Moallem said. The U.N. has yet to conclude its investigation into at least four other sites of alleged attacks, including Khan al-Assal, where Syrian officials claim government forces were exposed to a nerve agent.

British and French officials say they believe military personnel were poisoned during a March 19 gas attack in Khan al-Assal but that the soldiers were hit by friendly fire.